Discussion: How Hip-Hop Failed Black America

thirdward

Questlove on How Hip-Hop Failed Black America

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Hip-hop has taken over black music. Look at the music charts. There aren’t many hip-hop performers at the top of the charts lately: You have perennial winners like Jay Z, Kanye West, and Drake, along with newcomers like Kendrick Lamar, and that’s about it. Among women, it’s a little bit more complicated, but only a little bit. The two biggest stars, Beyoncé and Rihanna, are considered pop, but what does that mean anymore?

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The winners, the top dogs, make art mostly about their own victories and the victory of their genre, but that triumphalist pose leaves little room for anything else. Meaninglessness takes hold because meaninglessness is addictive.

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“Hip-hop fashion” makes a little sense, but even that is confusing: Does it refer to fashions popularized by hip-hop musicians. Others make a whole lot of nonsense: “Hip-hop food”? “Hip-hop politics”? “Hip-hop intellectual”? And there’s even “hip-hop architecture.” What the hell is that? A house you build with a Hammer?

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These days, nearly anything fashioned or put forth by black people gets referred to as “hip-hop,” even when the description is a poor or pointless fit.

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Someone mentioned the changing nature of the pop-culture game, and it made him nostalgic for the soul music of his youth. “It’ll be back,” he said. “Things go in cycles.” But do they?

read the all thing here:http://www.vulture.com/2014/04/quest...lture#comments

princedonte

I've been saying this for years

Espresso

Many African-American cultural pundits have been saying this for decades though. This isn't new.

Aatthew

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And that’s what it’s become: an entire cultural movement, packed into one hyphenated adjective. These days, nearly anything fashioned or put forth by black people gets referred to as “hip-hop,” even when the description is a poor or pointless fit.

This is a valid point, but the same goes for almost every genre despite him saying "This doesn’t happen with other genres" (which I think more so applies to the hip-hop fashion argument).

White people get the pop label, black girls who can sing get the R&B label, black guys who can sing get the R&B label, black guys get the rap/hip-hop label, girls who can rap just get the "female rapper" label, and so on, regardless of if that is 100% true.

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The music originally evolved to paint portraits of real people and handle real problems at close range — social contract, anyone? — but these days, hip-hop mainly rearranges symbolic freight on the black starliner.

Also valid, but the entire article is so meh to me. It's There wasn't all that much of an argument saying why and how hip-hop has failed the black community though. Maybe I read through it a little too fast.

TikiMiss

Hip hop is mainstream today because white record label bosses saw opportunity to make millions off of hip hop as a radical lifestyle of drugs and pimps sold to suburban white boys.